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I would actually attribute that more to people speeding and driving recklessly, as was endlessly documented.
I also agree that most speeds are too high to begin with, but it's way more attributable to people just choosing to drive like maniacs post-pandemic.
The road deaths have continued to rise, as the congestion has risen again with it.
So it's not just the congestion keeping us safe. It's literally some people have just straight given up caring or never understood physics to begin with.
Nah, we know this isn't the reason because in other countries that have better road design that actually takes psychology into mind for design speeds, they did not see the same uptick. Also, other countries are seeing gradual decreases in road deaths while the US continues to see increases.
You can also look at e.g., the dangerous by design reports and see very clearly WHERE the road fatalities are happening. During covid it was all over the map. Post covid, it is clearly skewing away from the blue cities.
It's a very clear natural experiment with an obvious conclusion: the US has fundamentally unsafe road engineering. We focus on speed over safety in our designs, which in low congestion works perfectly (i.e., makes roads fast and unsafe) and in nominal conditions achieves neither.
Load up all of AASHTO into rockets and shoot them into the sun.
I'm not really trying to argue, because I don't disagree about our road designs, however...
Then why are road deaths still increasing on roads where congestion is the norm, say I-5 in Seattle, for example?
I personally think it's also a cultural thing in the USA, not just that the roads are designed more dangerously. You also have more people willing and ready to drive dangerously.
It IS a cultural thing, but you're placing blame on bad actors when it's a systemic problem -- a systemic problem with the culture of US road engineering. That is, US road engineers do not have a robust culture of safety. The priority is and always has been speed and "level of service" (aka throughput) in the designs over safety or cost effectiveness or even pleasantness of the urban landscapes.
I'll never buy the idea that a wide set of diverse people across an entire continent are all just worse than the rest of people around the world. The fact that the problem is widespread is proof the issue is not bad actors.
The US does have more people who shouldn't be driving driving though, I'll agree with that much. But it isn't because they're reckless lunatics that don't care about other road users, and I'll never buy the covid arguments that people all went NUTS during covid and started mowing down pedestrians -- because no way that would've happened in JUST the US and nowhere else. It is, again, a systemic issue. The same one. Since driving is essential for most people to live their lives in the US, people who had no business driving are driving. Because of our INCREDIBLY terrible philosophy towards urban design and road constructions, we have pigeonholed ourselves into an expensive, unsafe urban landscape.
A lot of mass transit got downsized during covid, for example. That could've put more bad drivers on the roads -- but it isn't because they're monsters, it's because they have no choice.